At the last official meeting of the Wright State Chapter of ACM, President Alison Guyton suggested members reach out to local high school about Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week December 8th to 14th.
Leah Blake’s younger sister, a Junior at Centerville High School in Dayton, Ohio, mentioned that her Honors Pre-AP Pre-Calculus teacher Mr. Kenneth Barrett was trying to gather interest for an AP Computer Science course. Leah contacted Mr. Barrett about bringing Hour of Code to Centerville High School.
December 11th was set aside for Mr. Barrett’s Pre-Calculus classes to devote to an hour of programming. Leah Blake, James Anderson, and Dallas “DJ” Miller spent the day at Centerville High School helping students and answering questions. The students used Codecademy’s Python course (http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/python). Every student had access to a Chromebook and many made personal accounts on Codecademy's website so that they could continue their progress at home.
Mr. Barrett thought the day was quite successful; when asked, a third of his students said they had a greater interest in Computer Science and programming by the end of the hour.
